The Eighth Grade Waldorf School Sessions of 2014

As part of their science lessons, two 8th grade classes from Orchard Valley Waldorf School came to Lifecycling to learn about sustainability. The first group constructed a hot water solar system and the second group did some excavating using hand tools.

Recently there has been a striving to mimic the way nature functions. James Lovelock, along with Lynn Margulas, changed the way scientists look at the Earth and life itself. As time goes forward there is more evidence supporting the Gaia theory that the Earth is a whole system which is self regulating. In other words, when any one parameter becomes unbalanced the whole Earth must rebalance. Lifeforms, the atmosphere, and geological forms work together ensuring the Earth remains in a dynamic changing flux. For example, the concentration of atmospheric gases may change over time but only in a certain range before returning to a more balanced proportion. For this to occur the Earth works as a whole intity. Scientists are constantly discovering connections to seemingly unrelated events or processes. It is becoming harder to study a specific topic without considering the whole environment, for example, epigenetics.

Can we educate in the same manner? The 8th grade from Orchard Valley Waldorf School came to Lifecycling for four days to help build a hot water solar panel. We started the day with Bothmer exercises, developed by Graf von Bothmer in the 1920’s after being inspired and guided by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf eduction. Through movement one must focus on different parts of the exercize without letting go of the whole. It is easy to focus on the position of your arms then discover that your head is out of position. Using this metaphor and thinking about all of the challenges the world now faces, it is time to focus on the various parts without letting go of the whole. We have been looking at economic challenges, social challenges, or environmental challenges separately, however, unless we address these challenges on a holistic level it will be hard to move forward.

Opening day with Bothmer exercises.

Here at Lifecycling space is limited so our living room is our classroom, at least for the time being. After movement, it was time to move inside to investigate a variety of topics; exponential growth, throughput, laws of thermodynamics, Newton’s law of gravity, density of matter, climate change, kinetic and potential energy, the amount of carbon in our soils and the microbial life in the soils. Some of the topics are easy to connect while others …well, not so easy. One must look at the whole picture. The image is one where the educator (artist) is painting a picture. The artists starts in the upper right corner of the canvis with only a few dabs of paint then moves to another section continuing until a picture starts to develop. At some point the students start to fill in the gaps and not only the students become excited, but also the educator.

The 8th graders have come to Lifecycling to build a hot water solar panel. The first hour and a half are spent talking about thermodynamics, Newton’s law of gravity, density, kinetic and potential energy and of course, throughput and how it applies to what we are doing.

The class breaks for lunch.

Intellectual learning is necessary in realizing why you are doing something in the physical realm and physical activity is necessary not only to retain interest in the intellectual learning but also to gain the skills to verify the reality of the academic learning. They go hand in hand and when they are integrated the student feels a sense of accomplishment.

The first step in the solar panel construction is cutting the copper pipe followed by cleaning the ends and fittings in preparation for soldering. During this time there is plenty of social activity and many reminders to pay attention to our main activity of making accurate cuts and cleaning so the soldering will hold.

Most of the pipes are soldered and the solar panel begins to take shape.

Since the copper pipe used was recycled it came in different lengths and not only did the students have to solder the regular joints but also they had to join shorter pieces together to get the lengths needed. All in all there were over 150 solder joints.

The copper pipe is cut using a tubing cutter. For all of the pipes to fit accurate measurements are necessary requiring a solid understanding of fractions.

The pipe ends were cleaned with emery cloth. If the joints are not cleaned well the solder will not completely take and the joint will leak.

Working together the students began soldering the pipes together.

Copper transfers heat well so sheets of recycled copper are used as a backing under the copper pipe.

It was satisfying to see this group so focused that I was able to walk around and photograph once and a while.

The solar panel had to be lower than the house to have enough pitch for the hot water to rise to the tank. The Bothmer exercises were connected to the movement of digging and when such connections are made it becomes more than just digging as the student enters a world of developing muscles while also considering the amount of carbon in the soil and atmosphere. Now they begin to connect the dots. Dirt is placed in a wheel barrel and transported to a pile of brush where new hoogles take shape. Earlier the students learned about momentum and now they experience momentum as they wheel the dirt down the hill to the garden. Using momentum, balance, timing, and agility, can they run the wheelbarrow up the ramp to the top of the hoogle and dump the dirt using very little strength? The dirt is heavy and when any one of the four parameters are not fully exercised strength is needed and sometimes no matter how much strength is added the dirt does not go where one wants.

The frame for the solar panel was built using carpentry skills. One of the students tries it on for size.

One of the main concepts presented at Lifecycling is throughput. It is quite different from efficiency, at least in terms of how our culture defines efficiency. As far as I can tell efficiency only is concerned with a narrow band of parameters of a system where as throughput is concerned with all of the parameters. When I was first introduced to the idea of thermosiphon I wanted to apply this concept to a hot water solar panel. A friend of mine from Pennsylvania had just taken a solar panel off of his roof because the control panel that operated the circulator pump failed and he could not get a replacement since the company no longer existed. I strapped the panel on top of my car and transported it to Vermont where I built a frame for it. Now I needed many plumbing parts to connect the panel to my hot water tank and so I went to the local hardware store. The clerk at the hardware store was also installing a solar hot water system, however, his panel was up on his roof (above the tank), whereas mine was on the ground (below the tank).

Thermosiphon System

The 8th grade learned about thermodynamics, density of water, Newton’s gravitational law and how these concepts work to produce thermosiphon.

System with Panel Above the Tank

Since hot water rises, in the clerk’s system a pump, a controller, and electricity were needed to circulate the hot water down to the tank setting up the necessity for a pump, electrical wires, the electrical needs, the factories to produce these components and the rest of the endless throughput.

Although his system used electricity, his was deemed more efficient because for the same square footage of solar panel the clerk’s delivered more hot water. By the end of the day the temperature of his hot water tank was higher than mine under the similar conditions yet about ten years later I asked him how his solar system was running and he told me he had taken it off of his roof because his control panel had failed and he also had had to replace the circulator pump. My system, with no moving parts and no electricity needed, was still runnning strong. Many times the amount of resources to keep high efficiency systems going is much greater and this should be calculated into the true efficiency or “throughput”.

The round objects on the wall of the house are vents leading into the house.

The copper pipes and backing are painted black to absorb more heat. Since water is flowing through the pipes the solar panel must be drained in the fall to prevent freezing. During the late fall, winter and early spring we use the masonry wood stove to heat our water so the hot water panel is not needed. However, we can always use extra heat to reduce the amount of wood burned and since the copper will heat up easily without the water running through the pipes to cool the panel this heat will be transferred through vents leading into the house.

In the winter months the panels will only heat up when the sun is shining, an ideal time to make electricity to run the fans that will move the hot air into the house where the heat will be stored for night time use.

At the end of the session I gave the students instructions to discuss what it was they had learned during their time at Lifecycling. I left them on their own and in the distance I could hear a healthy debate. Curiosity got the best of me so I moved closer to hear what was being said and I heard them discussing that building the infrastructure to combat global warming may indeed cause more global warming. Yes, on their own they defined throughput. We may in fact have to build systems to combat global warming, but if we do not include throughput in the discussion we cannot make informed decisions about the infrastructure needed.

What is so special about this solar hot water project is its simplicity. Most of the copper pipe and all of the copper backing came from the salvage yard and the glass that covers the panel was from an old sliding glass door. In terms of saving resources and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it is always better to reuse materials rather than recycle. An eighth grade class was able to build this functional solar panel using local and recycled materials. What this means in the future is that local plumbers, electricians, landscapers, etc. can build our systems, in turn strengthening our local economies and reducing throughput very step of the way.

I regret that there were no photos taken during the second session as it is always nice to have a clear image of the project at hand. This time the project was to excavate the backside of the house using various hand tools such as shovels, picks, hoes, etc.

We opened the day with Bothmer exercises (refer to 8th grade 2013-2014-solar panel project). Again these exercises were connected to physical work, one of the main goals being to try to accomplish many deeds when doing an action, a major theme in Permaculture developed by Bill Molleson and David Holmgrin. When excavating around the house the students were developing movement skills such as an athlete would in addition to sequestering carbon by building hoogles (refer to landscape article), gardening, or just being together socially, all countless interactions when taken as a whole. We ended the session with a game of Capture the Flag through the woods. As a former movement instructor I’ve had the opportunity to observe children learn to run only on flat fields and tracks verses children who learn to run on uneven ground and through the woods. The ones who run only on flat ground cannot navigate uneven ground and have greater ankle injuries while children who run on uneven ground not only have less injuries, but when it is time to run on flat ground they can really open up and run quite fast and with great agility. Upon completion of their lessons at Lifecycling Jane Hill, the 8th grade teacher, had the students enter their experiences in their Main Lesson books, a Waldorf form of student created texts. As I stated this session was mainly excavating which composed of quite a bit of digging yet what they experienced was mainly Hoogle building. They all drew the anatomy of a Hoogle each referring to their own perception and imagination of what the Hoogle looked like.

It is a holistic experience we are trying to develop. Our challenges of climate change, economy, poverty, war, etc. are all interconnected and will only be solved with a holistic approach. How can we take this holistic approach when our educational system teaches all of the subjects as separate topics? Science, math, movement, art, language, literature, etc. could be taught in a way that makes connections between the different disciplines.